A network analyzer or sniffer may be employed in a data network for continuous monitoring of the network environment to generate alarms or reports when some thresholds such as error rates, percent utilization, percent idle time are exceeded. Network activity information such as percent network utilization may be captured in real time based on various parameters such as network traffic picks. Also, sniffer may gather statistics based on network activity, errors, protocols, frame sizes or traffic history routing, etc.
A conventional sniffer probe is connected to a single port of a communication device to sniff or monitor traffic via the port. However, in a multiport network switch, it would be desirable to provide a sniffing system that enables a sniffer or network-analyzing probe connected to a sniffer port to monitor receive and transmit traffic on multiple ports.